An average of one building every minute will need to be refurbished between now and 2050 to meet the national targets for carbon emissions reduction.
This year’s CIBSE national conference, to be held on April 7 at the Grand Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden, will focus on the refurbishment challenge being faced by the building services industry.
Reducing the UK’s carbon emissions to meet government targets of an 80% reduction by 2050 will require an enormous effort, including tackling the energy efficiency of the UK’s existing building stock. There are some 26 million homes and about 2 million commercial and non-domestic premises that need to be refurbished by 2050.With around 21 million minutes between now and 2050, we need to refurbish one building a minute on average over the next 40 years, even if we start today.
Hywel Davies, CIBSE’s technical director, said: “The CIBSE national conference will explore how this challenging target can be achieved and how the building services industry can provide the knowledge and skills necessary to make it possible.”
The conference will feature presentations from a wide range of speakers with sessions including the value proposition for clients needed to win refurbishment tenders, how to access the practical information needed to achieve low-carbon refurbishment, and cost planning for refurbishment projects.
There will also be a panel discussion looking at ‘Knock it down and start again’ where a developer, a building services engineer, an architect and an energy expert will debate what is the right course of action to achieve the best result for the client and the country. Real-life case studies will be used to take a practical look at refurbishment projects, highlighting success stories but also warning about the possible pitfalls
